Chemical mechanical polishing (“CMP”) is a semiconductor wafer planarizing and/or polishing procedure widely used in the fabrication of semiconductor wafers. As the name implies, there are two components to the process: chemical and mechanical polishing. Chemical polishing involves the introduction of chemicals that dissolve imperfections and impurities present upon the wafer. Mechanical polishing involves rotating the wafer upon an abrasive “polishing pad” in order to planarize the wafer. Generally, the wafers are mounted upside down on a wafer carrier and rotated above a polishing pad sitting on a platen. The platen is also rotated. Typically, a slurry containing both chemicals and abrasives is introduced upon the pad. The more defect-free the pad is, the less defects that are imparted to the wafer and the longer the pad lasts.
One problem that may occur during the course of many CMP cycles is delamination of the platen coatings around the edge of the platen. This may cause the pad to adhere poorly to the edge and allow the pad to peel up at the edges, which creates a hazard for the wafers.
Another problem is that replacing a pad is not as easy as it sounds since the forces imparted to the pad during the CMP process causes the pad to adhere to the platen with more strength than initially existed when the pad was adhesively coupled to the platen. This may lead to wasted time in removing the pad as well as exacerbating the delamination problem noted above.